


Mercy in the Hidden Cosmos

by Lunarium



Category: A Redtail's Dream (Webcomic)
Genre: Beginning of Year 0, Crucifixion, Exhaustion, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, SSSS crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 17:13:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11109123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/pseuds/Lunarium
Summary: Getting shot by a robber in the family bakery is not the only thing haunting Joona.





	Mercy in the Hidden Cosmos

**Author's Note:**

> Written for H/C Bingo Amnesty Challenge for May, which is small fandoms. I've been meaning to write this pairing for quite a while, and so glad to finally get that chance! :) My prompts from H/C Bingo that apply here are exhaustion and crucifixion.

“Stay with me.” 

Joona, sweat gleaming on his placid skin and hair sticking to his forehead, gave a small nod. He had stopped panicking a while ago. Something about Anssi taking all this all in stride had calmed him considerably, because he was definitely _not_ calm when Anssi and Riikka barged into the bakery. By all counts the place should have been closed. It was after hours, but Joona had stayed behind to get the place ready for the next day as a favor for his father. And he was glad to have done it, that it was him bleeding on the floor and not Jouko Kuikka, respected man of Hokanniemi. 

It was Riikka who dialed the police; by then the robber had run out, and Joona was holding onto his leg. How the bullet went there, he couldn’t remember. The gun was aiming for his head. He remembered yelling, and suddenly there was a flash of light.

But by the time Anssi placed a towel over the wound and pressed to bring pressure, Joona shifted all the duty to him, checking himself out of this reality. 

He could still hear the gun shot—he was lucky it wasn’t his skull bleeding on the floor, but where he was struck was still pretty bad. But, how? How did it miss him and end up there? 

_Why are you questioning why you’re still alive?_

“Stay with me,” Anssi said in a low voice. “Stay with us.” 

Blare of sirens reached his ears, but they were growing fainter.

*

It took every bit of Joona’s effort and cunning to convince his father to let him return to work.

He spent the night at the hospital and well into the next day. He was feeling better by the evening. There weren’t complications and after a blood transfusion and some rest he was well enough to leave. He had fainted more from the shock of the experience (though he had not confessed the part of the flashing light, for he could not explain that even to himself.) He should have been back home by the evening, but the discharge process moved at a snail’s pace and it wasn’t until the following morning that he finally left. He also had to deal with the police and filing a report of the man who had shot him. 

Joona offered to get back to work right away. It wouldn’t have been fair for his father. They were running head-on against a major holiday, and orders were stacking high. Even with Hannu and Ville helping out, they could do with another pair of hands (especially one who didn’t complain and moan every hour, although Joona did require at least one coffee break. Just to recharge him.) 

To his relief, his father gave in. For the first couple days, he worked without stop, sinking himself in work so deep that he could forget everything that happened that night. With no news of the police ever catching the guy, Joona pretended he didn’t let that haunt him. He kept volunteering to stay late to clean up, even against his father’s requests. 

“If the guy comes back, I’d rather be the one facing him, Dad,” Joona had said, laughing. “I don’t think you can wrestle him at your age.” 

His father had given him a stern look but otherwise complied with his wishes. 

By the fourth day, he was pale as snow. He barely slept; the moment he would closed his eyes he’d begin to hear the gun sounding off and he’d jolt awake, grabbing for his leg. Instead he’d lie in bed at night and listen for any signs of the robber coming to finish him off in his bed. 

Pain from his leg would flare up only on occasion. When it did, he would pop in a painkiller without much thought. He trusted himself not to get addicted. He once broke an arm as a teen while doing something really stupid—even Joona had to admit it was really stupid—and never got hooked on the stuff the whole time he was on it. So he figured one more dose wasn’t going to tempt his brain any farther than it already had. 

But hell if the stuff didn’t knock him cold. And that was always bad. It meant that he’d sleep when he tried to avoid it, and forced into dreams that spiraled into nightmares real fast. 

Perhaps enduring the pain was the safer bet. And so he prowled through the pain, even after hours of work, even on top of the sleepless nights. He did it all with his winning smile.

*

“Hey!”

Joona blinked a few times and glanced around. Jonna leaned forward, one hand on the table to support her weight while the other feeling his forehead. He tried to pull back, but it was no use. His clothes were drenched in sweat. Lucky that he wasn’t sneezing or his father would personally escort him out because the last thing anyone needed were tainted pastries. 

He didn’t have to see himself in the mirror to know he looked like one of the walking dead. 

“You look shitty! You need to go home and rest! I _know_ you haven’t been sleeping!” 

“Can’t,” Joona said. “Dad needs all the help he can get.” 

Ignoring him, Jonna tugged on his sleeve, and soon Joona found his legs carrying him towards the door. His apron was still about him. 

“Hannu and Ville are here. We’re good.” 

“Come on, you trust _Hannu_?” 

Jonna gave him a devious smirk. “If he gets whiny again I’ll sic Oona on him. You went through hell. We can take it over from here.” 

Finding no other place to argue, Joona thanked her and made his way back home. 

His body finally gave up on him the moment he got into bed. He had pulled a book with him to pass the time, as even the thought of playing a game on his phone exhausted him, but the words blurred in his eyes and soon the book slipped from his hands. He leaned back, and no sooner had his head hit the pillow that everything went black.

*

He was back at the bakery, working diligently and alone. Each new pastry nearly blossomed in his hand, fully formed and perfect, and he added it to the pile. The customers were going to love this, he thought with a prideful smile. He paid attention to nothing else.

Till the door behind him blasted open as if a sudden gust of wind blew past, the chill terrible to the bone. Gasping, he spun around with knife in his hand, but it was not the robber. No gun faced him. 

A tall cloaked figure loomed over him like a shadow, engulfing him in darkness. Joona sought to meet their eyes but could not find a face in the perpetual darkness. 

“ _By Untamo thine uncle’s command, thou shall atone, wizard._ ” 

“What?” 

His entire body froze up, but it was not from fear. It was as if some external force suddenly pressed on him on all angles, locking him into place. 

“ _By Untamo thine uncle’s command, thou shall atone, wizard._ ” 

_What are you talking about?_ Joona wanted to cry out, unable to even move his mouth. He struggled but to no avail; he came crashing down onto the floor. The hooded man beckoned him with a hand long and thin, and his body dragged against the floor powdery from flour and dust. They stained his apron and clothes and dust collected around his nose, making him sneeze, and pain erupted in his recovering leg, but still he was dragged, past the front doors and deep into the night. He tried to kick, but it only resulted in losing both sandals along the way. He hoped someone would find them and come to his rescue. 

Hardly a star shown above him in the sea of black above, and the moon barely a sickle. He remembered a night of many colors in waves and stars, and something glowed in his heart, and for a moment he thought he could cast away the hooded man as he had done to the robber, but the man knew of his thoughts and kept him in his place. 

They soon entered the forest. Not a single leaf clung to the branches which twisted at odd jagged angles, sickly pale against the black night. Suddenly lifted off the ground, Joona was pressed against the bark of a large bare oak tree. His arms were forced apart from his body. Against all this he could not break the binds. 

“ _By Untamo thine uncle’s command, thou shall atone, wizard._ ” 

The hooded man gave a different gesture with his hand and a few large, long nails drew from his deep pockets. Joona’s eyes widened and he struggled to break free, but the man held him in place. 

The first nail pierced his left palm so fast like a bullet, and white pain shot before his eyes. He cried out, back arched, eyes searching for some mercy in the hidden cosmos. 

_Help! Get me out! Get me out!_

The second nail pierced through his right foot, and tears burst from his eyes. 

“ _By Untamo thine uncle’s command, thou shall atone, wizard._ ” 

_Why are you doing this?_

The third nail dug into his left foot, and he wept loudly. Pain throbbed in both feet, and he could feel it in his head, pounding like his head was about to crack wide open. Desperately he thought of the colorful night sky, of sitting out with his sister, their friends, playing games on a table outside, sharing drinks and some snacks— _“Stay with me, Joona”_ —having to put up with Paju, pranking out poor little Riikka, wondering where Hannu was and, when they had saw him at last, wondering who that new friend of his was—

“ _By Untamo thine uncle’s command, thou shall atone, wizard._ ” 

The final nail drove into his right palm, but it felt like it had pierced right into the middle of his forehead and right through his heart. Every inch of him shrieked with excruciating pain. 

Colorful night, clouds, so magical, sister, the drinks, the laughter, Riikka, Paju, Anssi—

_“Stay with me.”_

“Joona, wake up.”

*

Joona jolted awake, covered in sweat and panting heavily, but otherwise he was not bleeding. No marks shown on his palms, and his feet did not throb from being pierced by nails.

A towel lightly dabbed his forehead. 

“Jonna told me to come see you,” Anssi said. “She said you were having a nightmare.” 

Joona’s breathing returned to normal, he studied Anssi, blinking a couple times to make sure Anssi was really there. “She did? Was she here?” 

“No. She’s still at the bakery, but she called me. Riikka gave her my cell some time after they began dating.” 

“Then how’d she know I was having a nightmare?” 

Anssi shrugged. “She’s been having a lot of strange dreams and visions. Riikka told me. Ever since we had that viewing of the Northern Lights.”

The magical, colorful waves. Yes, something about it kept drawing him back, like he had drunk from a cup poured with the contents of that cosmic pool. 

“Joona?” 

He glanced up, not realizing he had dazed off. “Sorry.” 

Joona knew Anssi to be normally laid back, but he was studying Joona closely in that moment. “You kept saying something in your sleep. ‘Thou shall atone, wizard.’ Or something.” 

“‘ _By Untamo thine uncle’s command, thou shall atone, wizard_ ,’” Joona recited. “Some guy was dragging me with his mind powers or something and then threw me against a tree and—and, crucified me. It was really bizarre.” 

Anssi gave him an odd look. “Untamo?”

“Yeah.” 

Getting up, Anssi browsed through Joona’s bookshelf before finding what he was looking for. He brought the book back to Joona, but not before flipping it to a certain page. He pointed at the passage. 

“ _Then they hung him to an oak tree, crucified him in the branches, that the wizard there might perish. When three days and nights had ended, Untamoinen spake as follows: 'It is time to send my heralds to inspect the mighty oak-tree, there to learn if young Kullervo lives or dies among the branches.'_ "

A shiver ran down Joona’s spine as he slowly closed the book. “So you’re telling me either I’m Kullervo incarnate or some Untamo is after to kill me because he thinks I’m a wizard?” 

“Or you’re just becoming a wizard, and your subconscious had somehow internalized all this stuff from the Kalevala and spit it back at you,” Anssi suggested, shrugging. “Anything weird happening lately?” 

The robber. The light blast. Jonna acting odd in sending Anssi here. Joona’s jaws hung open as clarity dawned on him, but he shook his head, too amazed to speak. 

“Wait—when that robber shot that gun, something happened. I somehow sent a burst of magic and it must have, I dunno, knocked the bullet away from my head or something or I would have been in a coma by now. It wasn’t _good_ magic because I still got shot in the leg, but—is that what it was? _Magic?_ ” 

He eyed the small television set in his room and mentally focused his will at it. To his amazement it turned on. 

“No way!” 

The news droned on about some emerging epidemic, but Joona was more focused on his hands. “What does this mean? What happened that night? When we saw the Northern Lights? I feel like it changed all of us. Ville is suddenly a person and we’ve never seen the dog since, Jonna can see my dreams, I…I can do magic?! What’s this all about?” 

Anssi watched the news silently for some time before giving a shrug and placing his hands over Joona’s. “Time will tell.”

**Author's Note:**

> The part from the book that Joona reads aloud comes, of course, from The Kalevala. :) That particular line played a role in inspiring this piece.


End file.
